In manufacturing mass produced cigarettes, it is important to maintain various parameters constant from cigarette to cigarette so that one cigarette is virtually identical to the next. One of the characteristics closely controlled in cigarettes is density of the tobacco rod. Density of the rod is important for several reasons, one of which is that it affects the smoking characteristics of the cigarette. Another reason is that a cigarette which is not dense enough will not be firm and will tend to deform in the hand of the smoker.
The density of the tobacco in a cigarette has been associated, in general, with the firmness characteristics of the cigarette because the conventional cigarette wrapper has little structural strength and serves mainly to contain the rod of tobacco. Thus, the cigarette rod owes its structural strength and firmness almost entirely to the density of the tobacco in the rod. A conventional cigarette has a rod of compacted tobacco shreds surrounded by a very thin paper wrapper. Its rigidity and firmness are largely dependent on density of the rod. To use a less dense rod is not practical because the cut tobacco filler of the cigarette would not stay together, and to make the paper wrapper thicker and stronger still would not keep the tobacco from falling out if it were more loosely packaged.
Accordingly, there exists in the art a need for a wrapper which when used in the manufacture of smoking articles such as cigarettes, provides a smoking article in which structural rigidity is relatively independent of the density of the tobacco.